How to build trust in interpersonal relationships

"To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved” said George Macdonald. It is precisely true. What is the use of love if there is no trust. Trust is more to be desired than simply loving someone. I doubt if a love without trust would last. At this point, trust is an essential safeguard in the area of love whether it is love between two lovers, or parents love towards children, or even friendship love.

To be a little bit more technical, credibility is intellectual while trust is visceral. Visceral here simply means something that is related with habit. Characters and behaviors are the bottom line of visceral. If we are to make an illustration on credibility it is like buying a computer pc which has a lot of systems and function but won’t be durable. By then the trust must come in at that point.

We can earn credibility but not trust. Trust is a byproduct of behavioral. No matter how many honorary degrees that we have been offered, we shall never earn the trust as a package with it. Unless the trust is expressed in our behavior, they are worthless.

Studying at prestigious Universities in the World, living in the most desired and dreamt nations neither promise any trust. It is not exclusive to race, nationality and status. Learn or unlearned, trust can be achieved and lived it out.

So are the peoples who come across to our own world. Some shows up with very impressive credibility but not all would deserve or earn our trust. When there is no trust, a relationship just becomes a tie, not a kind of commitment.

And yet trust is mutual. Perfect trust would result when the two parties mutually trust each other. It is like a win-win situation. No one should be confused with unconditional love. One might be wrong to say that trust is totally conditional. But more or less it is true.

By trusting each other in a relationship sustains the two parties intact. It can even energize to achieve a higher purpose, dreams, and visions. So how can we build trust?

As mentioned above since trust is behavioral attributes, we can nurture it. One can share important information including about one’s self so that it will become a foundational building of trust when other knows essential personal background. How do we know who to trust unless we learn a about someone?

One must be willing to be influenced by others. My all time favorite public speaker Dale Carnegie said that leadership is an influence. Of course we are not talking here about leadership but apart from “trust” no leader is a good leader. So also is in building trust. There must be a willingness to be influenced. On cannot be one single minded to build trust. But again a willingness to be influenced is different from being compromised.

One must also be fair in order build a trust. Though “fair” in its meaning seems to be infinite. But fairness can be observed in the areas honesty, being just, and also being free from bias.

One of the most serious but often failed is to keep promise. Everyone hates people who do not fulfill promise. I wonder if one can find me to the source but I have heard several times about this. They say “promises are to break.” It may be true. We hate promise breaker but no one has perfected it. Therefore, never make promises that you are not able or are not intending to keep and never ask others to do anything that you would not do yourself.

Attentive listening skill is also essential. One cannot think that if we are trusted when everybody simply listens to him/her. Since trust is mutual, one must be good at listening. I recall one of my counseling course Professors taught us how to attentively listen to a client. Unless when the client trusts us, how can he/she open up the problems that are involved. We were always told to practice on how to have empathy on the client. So also is in the art of listening, empathy is the key.

These are some tips that I think to be helpful but not to be limited. There are a lot of competitive advantages result when trust is firmly build in a personal, a group, team and community level. Even being a sale man/woman if you keep your promises, you are willing to help, your inspire confidence, you treat customers as individuals, and you are a physical impression on the products, the customers will keep on coming to do business with you.